April 1999

Price: $4,495

RATINGS (0-5)
Installation: 4.5
Documentation: 3.5
Features: 4.5
Overall: B

Sometimes in the course of business events, it becomes necessary (or desirable, at any rate) to videoconference. Dozens of solutions are available, spanning the gamut of performance, price, and purpose, from $99 USB video cameras to $20,000 big-screen industrial broadcasting systems. Most companies seek a mid-level solution that's easy to use, performs well, and costs less than a new Hyundai. So when personnel from a television and consumer electronics mega-conglomerate said they could deliver the goods, we decided to subject their system to our tests.

Sony's TriniCom Digital Meeting System/Small Group version (also known as the VMU1100SG), like its competitors from Polycom and VTEL, costs less than $10,000. Street prices are $4,000 for each 1100SG system, but of course, at least two systems are required because the product is not yet H.323-compliant. The ISDN system is a black-box device that attaches to a Windows 95/98 PC. Included are features like remote control and GUI-based control, customizable viewing angles, multiple lenses, auto-focus, image chasing, and picture-in-picture.

INSTALLATION
A basic single-side configuration requires five pieces of hardware: a PC, a system unit, a conference telephone, a monitor, and a video camera. The system unit, telephone, and camera are all included with the system, as is a set of cabling required to make everything work. The cabling diagram is complicated, but it helps to draw it as a six-pronged star pattern, with ends going toward the PC, monitor, ISDN line, power supply, conference telephone, and video camera. Optional radii can be attached for external video outputs (like a bigger monitor or VCR) and for additional video cameras.

We had some minor problems along the way. These included a small section of wire insulation stuck inside the DC input jack on the conference telephone, multiple connectors that didn't resemble their illustrations in the instruction manual, a stubborn power connector that slipped out too easily, and ISDN software requiring some customization (because we used a simulator instead of an actual ISDN line) before it would connect properly.

After those issues were resolved, we installed the software, which comes on five 3.5-inch disks. The software installs the Digital Meeting System video conferencing software and DataBeam's FarSite 3.0 collaboration software, and it checks your PC for the presence of Microsoft's NetMeeting. The software installation was quite simple. Everything worked fine once we sorted out our ISDN software issue by using custom settings instead of NT-1 settings with SPIDs. Finally, we programmed each camera's time and date stamp, which is semi-Y2K compliant: after the year 2026, the year changes back to 1997.

DOCUMENTATION
As we mentioned, there was the minor issue of misdrawn connectors. This was easily overcome by a process of elimination, but a greater challenge was deciphering the master flow chart depicting an entire system. The chart was confusing, and could have been explained much better using the star pattern described above. Explanation was also lacking on the various camera and video features, which are better explained in the separate camera user's manual. A third manual adequately documents the FarSite software. Meanwhile, the online help for FarSite was good, but online help for the video conferencing itself was non-existent. There weren't even bubble help (icon tooltips), a Windows convention that every piece of software should utilize.

FEATURES
Users place calls between systems by selecting telephone numbers from a primitive address book. Outbound DTMF tones, busy signals, ring tones, etc. are audible through the conference telephone's speaker, as are inbound rings - auto-answer is an option as well. Once a call is underway, users on either end can disable either the local or remote video. Also adjustable are the window sizes. And, by manipulating the buttons on the control bar, users may control image features like hue, saturation, brightness, and contrast; the display of the local time and date; and the ability to let remote users control the local camera. Local users can also adjust the volume of the conference telephone or optional head/handset or VCR, and they can choose between FarSite and NetMeeting as the default collaboration software.

More advanced features include software-based camera control and image chasing. By selecting the camera button on either the local or remote video window, a calculator-like GUI appears. The buttons include three customizable camera direction presets: far/near focus; wide/tight zooms; autofocus; backlight on/off; and directional controls for horizontal, vertical, and angular camera movements.

Picture-in-picture is activated by selecting the "PiP" icon in the window of the originating caller. The PiP window has seven sizes to choose from, and it can be placed in any quadrant of the master window. Clicking the PiP icon a second time exits the mode.

Image chasing is the ability to make a camera follow a selected image, such as a person or demonstration. Accessed entirely through the remote control, users choose between three chase modes and four capture modes. The chase modes are: tracking only when the subject is in the screen; tracking that follows the subject and keeps it centered in the screen; and tracking that only follows when the subject approaches the screen's edge. Capture modes include: standard recognition; color recognition; backdrop recognition; and brightness/picture recognition.

The FarSite application offers its own feature set, including application sharing, a connection time indicator, file/workbook sharing and transferring, file conferencing, zoom/annotations, and screen captures. It also offers 10 pointers, 30 colors, 6 line widths, 8 fill patterns, 16 highlighter colors, 4 highlighter widths, and complete font control. Other features of the VMU1100SG include:

• Six preset buttons via remote control for camera angles, etc.
• H.261 video encoding/H.221 communications.
• 100 degrees horizontal/25 degrees vertical camera tilt.
• 12� zoom lens.
• Full-duplex conference telephone with echo cancellation.
• 2B channel/1D channel BRI ISDN connections for AT&T 5ESS, DMS 100, NI/NT-1.
• Support for 486 processor/Windows 3.x with bi-directional parallel port.
• Vertical system unit mounting tool.

OPERATIONAL TESTING
Controlling camera movements, presets and chase/tracking methods is easy to learn and initiate. Intuitive methods (for example, designating each camera a unit number and choosing the corresponding number on the remote control) make it easy to use multiple cameras in one location. The PiP option and FarSite's collaboration options are equally simple to operate, even for a non-technical user, which exponentially increases the product's value. If you ask a non-technical employee, a commercial-grade video conferencing system probably sounds difficult to use, but if they can master a VCR, then this system will be a cinch. We still prefer to use NetMeeting instead of FarSite, but the Sony developers were smart enough to make that an option.

We found the video quality to be much more in line with higher-end systems like Intel's TeamStation than with the low-end video cameras. Incidentally, we noticed the conference telephones were licensed from Polycom. Before we even read the fine print on the telephones' bottom labels, we recognized the conspicuous lack of sound latency, combined with a poor echo. As is the case with voice-over-Internet telephony gateways, when there is less latency, audio quality suffers, and vice versa - it's a trade-off. This seemed to be the case with the TriniCom system. But in Sony/Polycom's defense, we can't prove this theory because the coders used are not adjustable. Using a high-quality external microphone also would improve the situation.

ROOM FOR IMPROVEMENT
We have several issues with this system. The image chasing/tracking is easily confused, the audio quality through the conference telephones is questionable and there is no way to create a screen capture of the video display. We suspect screen capture is available, because the system bypasses the operating system hooks in Windows. When we tried making a screen capture using numerous utilities, each attempt resulted in an image of the GUI with only a black box where the video should have been.

The GUI-based camera control has swift movements for direction control but slow movements for zooming. Using the remote control provides two zoom speeds, but the directional control is too slow when the zoom is in close-up mode. We also found that the video windows and control GUI are entirely separate windows from each other, and they cannot be moved as a group. Even worse, they are always in an "on top" mode, with no way to minimize or hide them. Like the video displays, they seem to bypass operating system hooks, which makes the system perform better but sacrifices some flexibility.

Fortunately, none of these problems significantly impedes the system's usage, but a more serious problem is the lag time for the remote video. Although the video quality in terms of resolution and frame rate stayed consistent for the remote video, there is about a four-second delay from video capture on one end to display on the other end. This delay won't be as noticeable across a WAN as it was on our testing network, but it also wouldn't be as bad on any network if the video stream for the remote end was consistent. Instead, the video stream was choppy. It's as if half of each frame's packets arrive on time and the other half take the scenic route.

Whether or not this delay is acceptable will ultimately be left to consumers to decide. We can't say the latency is better or worse than other systems, but we do think Sony engineers can at least fix the choppiness - perhaps an improved jitter buffer or some other cache improvements are needed. Late but smooth delay wouldn't be as bad as late and choppy delay.

CONCLUSION
This is a very good system for large LANs. We would not recommend this system for small networks or very large network environments where a VPN or other form of WAN is in use, although the system would function sufficiently in either environment if it had to. With the TriniCom Digital Meeting System/Small Group edition, Sony provides excellent pricing, good features and decent performance, but it seems relegated to the mid-sized corporate market where costs or scalability are the only concerns. For performance concerns, other systems can do better and offer more features. Incorporating some of the above suggestions, as well as H.323 compatibility (although H.320 and T.120 already are included) and improved documentation, this system's next incarnation could vie for our Editor's Choice award, but right now it needs some work.